I used to love the old trilogy of STATS books: Scouting Notebook, Major
League Handbook, and Player Profiles. Unfortunately, in 2003, The Sporting
News got involved and discontinued The latter two books. In their place,
they produced the inferior 2003 Register and 2003 Guide. The Register
looks back at the stats for the past season, but these are "baseball
card" stats. In other words, they just give you the basics and
only for the previous year. Player Profiles used to give stats for the
entire careers of all currently active big leaguers, and the Major League
Handbook went over the previous year with a finer-toothed comb than
the Register. The Guide looks ahead to the coming year, with schedules
and things of that nature. But it too pales in comparison to the old
books. I recommend getting the still-existing Scouting Notebook each
year, and supplementing that with the new "Bill James Handbook"
series of books. 648 pp.